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The most common cause for this symptom is failure of the DVD section of the dual laser. The most straightforward way to see if this is so is to try to boot the computer from a bootable DVD, such as a Windows installation DVD or a Linux Live DVD (they're usually pretty easy to find). This leaves out other factors like Windows, and if the drive cannot read the DVD to boot from, this confirms the drive needs replacement.

There is a small possibility that the laser lens could have a spot of something that blocks only the DVD laser beam, so cleaning the laser lens is another thing to check. However it's not very likely that a dirty lens would stop the DVD side and not affect the CD at all.

If the system boots happily from the DVD, then we can proceed to do diagnosis of a software cause.

The newer versions of ...? Media Player? Due to licensing conditions I believe, Media Player defaults to not having a DVD decoder installed, and needs to use a plug-in. Most people just use another player.